(CN) - A "smorgasbord" of claims by a group a San Francisco Bay Native Americans seeking tribal status has been tossed out in federal court, which ruled that members of the group failed to prove that they were descendants of a northern California tribe that was last recognized on official Indian rolls in 1927.
     The ruling, levied Wednesday in Washington, D.C., put an end to a more than two decades-long back-and-forth that started when the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe submitted a letter of intent to petition for federal tribal recognition in 1989.

     The Muwekma filed a formal petition, with thousands of pages of supplemental materials, to the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1995. But, the department rejected the request a year later, and again in 2001, saying that the Muwekma failed to show its members were direct descendants of an already-recognized people, the Pleasanton, or Verona Band, of Alameda County.
     The federal government's formal regulations for petitioning for tribal status - modified during the Muwekma's application process in 1994 - state that tribes must meet seven mandatory criteria.

     Specifically, a petitioner must be identified as an American Indian entity on a "substantially continuous" basis since 1900, that a prevalent portion of the petitioning group "must comprise a distinct community and have existed as a community from historical times until the present," and that membership of the petitioning group "must be composed principally of persons who are not members of any acknowledged North American Indian tribe."

     The Muwekma had argued that they were connected to the Verona Band, which was last recognized by the federal government in 1927.

     But according to the Department of the Interior, "the Muwekma could only produce one example between 1927 and 1995 where the Muwekma was identified 'as [the entity] that had evolved from the Indian settlement at the Verona station,' and the department concluded that '[o]ne example is not sufficient to meet'" the mandatory criteria, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said in a 48-page ruling.

     According to Walton, "the most obvious point at which the Muwekma could have first brought suit against the agency for purportedly terminating its tribal status was in 1989, when it was clear that it was aware that it was not a federally-recognized tribe. Given that the Muwekma did not bring this action against the Department until 2001, approximately twelve years after it undoubtedly possessed knowledge that it lacked acknowledgment by the federal government as a tribe, its unlawful termination of tribal status claim is plainly barred by" a statute of limitations.

     Once granted federal recognition, tribes are eligible for economic assistance, land, housing grants and other government benefits.

     "Ohlone," alternatively "Costanoan," was a label given to Indians along the Pacific Coast near San Francisco Bay who were concentrated by Spaniards in the 1800s. The group, once said to have more than 10,000 members, fractured into smaller tribes and its numbers plummeted.

     In 2000, the Muwekma's enrollment stood at about 400 members.
     In total, ten Native American groups have submitted petitions for tribal status under the Ohlone or Costanoan tribal name, six of which are pending.

     Walton rejected the Muwekma's six claims - including breach of fiduciary duty, violation of due process, and violation of the Administrative Protection Act and the Equal Protection Clause - and denied the tribe's motion for summary judgment.

"Despite the Muwekma's efforts to raise a smorgasbord of claims in an attempt to reverse the department's final determination, the court finds that there exists no basis upon which it may overturn the agency's findings. Accordingly, the court must grant the department's cross-motion for summary judgment, and deny the Muwekma's motion for summary judgment," he wrote.